I attended the IOSH Conference in Manchester today and looked forward to hearing new information about the Deepwater Horizon accident. Steve Flynn, VP HSSE at BP, was presenting a talk that was billed to be about the accident.

Instead, most of the talk was about the accident response. Only one slide was about the accident causes, and it was the lame “causal factor” slide from the original BP investigation completed over a year ago.

That investigation has already been discredited because its scope was limited to “immediate” causes and didn’t include generic or management system causes (no organizational factors). Thus, presenting it as a credible listing of the causes really disappointed me (and should embarrass BP).

In addition, Steve said that their report was “very similar” to the other reports that have been produced. I would agree with that only in that other reports have had a similar sequence of events. However, I think other reports have had much more information about the failures of BP’s shore management and on-site supervision that contributed to the accident.

Actually, when I heard about the talk, I was surprised that BP was presenting in public before all the lawsuits were complete. But I was even more surprised by such an uninformative presentation (that added nothing to learning about the accident’s causes) at a prestigious professional society meeting.

So, I was looking forward to a lively post talk question and answer session. I couldn’t believe that an audience of health and safety professionals would let the presentation go by without some difficult questions about the scope of the investigation and the lack of root cause analysis.

Unfortunately, the moderator took all the question and answer time asking about the “PR” failure of BP and a fairly softball question she received by text about “How BP had learned so much from an accident … how could others learn proactively?” She never let anyone in the audience ask even one “live” question.

Hopefully, BP’s lack of disclosure was linked to the current state of the lawsuits thus hamstringing the VP’s candidness (as you mentioned). If so, then BP shouldn’t have been on the roster of speakers until they are no longer muted in their discussions.

I wouldn’t depend on the CSB report much. They are too busy currying political favor and exceeding their mandate.
The Coast Guard-MMS inquiry has lots of data to ponder. There is an attempt to identify underlying latent causes in that report. The BP report stopped at the causal factor identifications. I believe that BP has enough smart people to do a root cause analysis and the original draft of their report probably contained a lot of material that their lawyers would not allow to be published.
It is disappointing when an organization fails to live up to expectations. Holding individuals and corporations accountable is not a politically correct action.

Mark, I’m disappointed but not surprised. I’m not sure how they do it, but consistently BP is able to spin any story to their advantage. They have better PR than technical staff! Very few people in the media are willing to take BP to task; an exception is Loren Steffy, a writer for the Houston Chronicle, who seems to be able to see through the spin. Even the politicians are caught up in it. That’s why they are allowed to continue to operate in spite of their horrific record of performance. I would expect the regulators would be able to both rise above the fray and to see the spin was just that, but I’m not sure. Remember that BP was a co-owner in the first well permit granted post-Macondo.

Good day Mark,
I for one am not surprised at the dodging of questions or the lack of fact put out for us to sift through. Being in the mining game I have often found that a finger needs to be pointed and someone must take a fall.

How often are we actually handed the facts or truths about what really happened and what was the real shortcoming. I am fairly sure that the presentation of the happenings was simply a PR move.

How many companies are really interested in the safety of their workers? (I say companies as I have met many individuals that are true Safety Professionals however their efforts are often gagged by powers beyond their control). How often is the blame placed on one individual where there are many factors leading up to the actual point of no return yet the individual takes the fall and the real underlying cause is swept away while everyone focuses on the individual.

Not many people admit to a failure, not many people pay attention to the Safety Guy. How often is Safety Seen simply as a necessary nuisance?

Mark, thanks for sharing because you have raised a point for which all professional societies should take notice. This is bad planning on the part of IOSH that leaves too many unanswered questions and a deepening suspicion of BP in the eyes of the attendees. Certainly not the intended purpose of the talk I would suspect. Even though I as not there, I am amazed BP’s attorneys allowed Flynn to even speak.

IOSH leadership should have insisted that a rigorous Q&A follow, but instead they spend time on PR. BP has spent untold millions on advertising along the Gulf coast.

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